work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5826,Soliloquy,Reading,2005-05-09 00:00:00 UTC,"... Though I had scarcely caught a faint glimpse of his person, there was something in the occurence that persuaded me it was Mr. Falkland. I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not the power immediately to suspend the career of my reflections.
(208-9)",,15565,•REVISIT. INTEREST. Overheard soliloquy.,"""I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not the power immediately to suspend the career of my reflections""","",2014-06-23 00:13:57 UTC,""
5925,"",Reading,2003-07-16 00:00:00 UTC,"My meditations had been ardently pursued, and, when I recalled my attention, I found myself bewildered among fields and fences. It was late before I extricated myself from unknown paths, and reached home.
(I.viii, p. 300)",,15723,"•INTEREST.Mervyn walks and wonders. I find the use of the word ""bewildered"" interesting. The pages previous mix up wandering and thinking as activities. REVISIT.","""My meditations had been ardently pursued, and, when I recalled my attention, I found myself bewildered among fields and fences.""","",2013-06-04 16:49:23 UTC,"Part I, Chapter 8"
5925,"",Reading,2003-07-18 00:00:00 UTC,"What would have been the fruit of deliberation, if I had had the time or power to deliberate, I know not. My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity. To shut this spectacle from my view was my first impulse; but to desert this man, in a time of so much need, appeared a thankless and dastardly deportment. To remain where I was, to conform implicitly to his direction, required no effort. Some fear was connected with his presence, and with that of the dead; but, in the tremulous confusion of my present thoughts, solitude would conjure up a thousand phantoms.
(I.xii, p. 326)",2007-06-26,15731,• Mervyn's reaction to Welbeck's narrative. Note the haunting of the mind implied in the last sentence. (Not included in database as a separate entry.),"""My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity.""","",2013-06-04 21:04:09 UTC,"Part I, chapter 12"
5960,"",Reading,2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,"Let me see: they tell me this is Monday night. Only three days yet to come! If thus restless to day; if my heart thus bounds till its mansion scarcely hold it, what must be my state tomorrow! What next day! What as the hour hastens on; as the sun descends; as my hand touches her in sign of wedded unity, of love without interval; of concord without end.
I must quell these tumults. They will disable me else. They will wear out all my strength. They will drain away life itself. But who could have thought! So soon! Not three months since I first set eyes upon her. Not three weeks since our plighted love, and only three days to terminate suspense and give me all.
I must compel myself to be quiet: to sleep. I must find some refuge from anticipations so excruciating. All extremes are agonies. A joy like this is too big for this narrow tenement. I must thrust it forth; I must bar and bolt it out for a time, or these frail walls will burst asunder. The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings. It traces out, and compels us to adhere to one path. It ever was my friend. Often has it blunted my vexations; hushed my stormy passions; turned my peevishness to soothing; my fierce revenge to heart-dissolving pity.
(Part II, chapter 23, p. 605; cf. pp. 207-8 in 1800 ed.)",,15853,"•:The beginning of the end. Mervyn to marry. Great stuff about the pen and mental control. (See Clarissa.)
•I've included twice: Wandering and Pen
•The ""all"" of the wedding night had me supposing that Brown would have us think that more than Mervyn's joy must thrust forth. Hints of masturbation?
•Note the heart's mansion and the mind's career.
•A writing or a landscape metaphor? — revised as MOTION.","""The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings.""",Inhabitants and Writing,2014-10-05 16:51:30 UTC,"Part II, Chapter 23"
7853,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-03-13 02:55:32 UTC,"
I scarcely need tell you, Clifton, that though you have resided but little with me, I feel all the fond affection of a parent; that I am earnestly desirous to hear of your happiness, and to promote it; and that no pleasure which the world could afford to me, personally, would equal that of seeing you become a good and great man. You have studied; you have travelled; you have read both men and books; every advantage which the most anxious desire to form your mind could-procure has been yours. I own that a mother's fondness forms great expectations of you; which, when you read this, be your faculties strong or weak, you will very probably say you are capable of more than fulfilling. The feeble, hearing their worth or talents questioned, are too apt to swell and assume; and I have heard it said that the strong are too intimately acquainted with themselves to harbour doubt. I believe it ought to be so. I believe it to be better that we should act boldly, and bring full conviction upon ourselves when mistaken, than that a timid spirit should render us too cautious to do either good or harm. I would not preach; neither indeed at present could I. A thousand ideas seemed crowding upon my mind; but they have expelled each other as quickly as they came, and I scarcely know what to add. My head-achs disqualify me for long or consistent thinking; and nothing I believe but habit keeps me from being half an idiot.
(I.xvii, pp. 199-201)",,23693,"","""A thousand ideas seemed crowding upon my mind; but they have expelled each other as quickly as they came, and I scarcely know what to add.""",Inhabitants,2014-03-13 02:55:32 UTC,"VOL 1, Letter XVII"